In our Modern Russia class, we looked at the top ten reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union. It is sad to say every year the US government is trying to re-execute these event/policies.
What concerns me is that as a nation, the government continues to progress one-by-one down the list of reasons the Soviet Union collapsed, sometimes in double-step (two wars in asian instead of one). The war in Afghanistan in point: the Soviets spent 10 years in their own Vietnam type war. It demoralized their country, weakened their military reputation, and cost $ billions of rubles. Did we learn from their Vietnam? No, not even from our own Vietnam. Government continues to response to crises instead of proactive solutions. Reform is postponed until it is too little; too late.
The two-party process of selecting candidates continues producing whackadoodle contenders, while the media (left or right) is content to delve no more than 1-5cm into any story. Even NPR/MPR, which pride themselves on delving into the story, don't execute more effort than restating the diatribe fed to them by the spinner/spokespeople. Only a few journalists, like John Stewart compare what people have said recently to their past, factchecking, and learning from history what is meant when this happens, or how this is the same path followed previously in history and here's how that ended up. Every day they are happy to report whether the stocks are up or down but without even an industry-wide level of analysis expected from any almanac.
Regarding the whackadoodle Bachmans and Pawlentys: seriously Democrats, if you can't product anyone capable of contending with Michelle Bachmann, we need a new alternate Party to the Republicans. All you have to do is demonstrate intelligence without overconfidence (the Al Gore problem), and it should be easy enough. Show that no taxes while compelling in the short term actually means more debt and devaluation of your existing and future money. Someone should be able to come forward, pull out of countries we have no business staying in, and in exchange swap those never-ending expenditures with investments in infrastructure assets.
Today there was an airplane that flew around NY with a banner complaining about the S&P downgrade. If that single prop plane landed on the mall today without a shot or missle fired at it, it would suggested that our defense system is a sham. All the money, none of it on actual defense, is spent overseas as either offense or peacekeeping. This approach was demonstrated in 1987 by Mathias Rust. I don't want to have this happen here; I wish there were actually surface-to-air batteries ready to defend our cities. I just don't believe they exist. They weren't used in Sept. 2001, and I don't think they're there now either.
The plethora of foreign wars, doesn't benefit our military might, it demeans it. We have the best trained personnel, vehicles in the world, but all it takes it trying to fight guerilla warfare with mobs to bring our status to that same level
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